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Principles of Organizational
Behavior
 Principles of
Organizational Behavior
The Handbook of Evidence-­Based Management

Third Edition

Craig L. Pearce
Edwin A. Locke
This edition first published 2023
© 2023 Craig L. Pearce and Edwin A. Locke

Edition History
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Names: Locke, Edwin A., editor. | Pearce, Craig L., editor. | John Wiley &
Sons, publisher.
Title: Principles of organizational behavior : the handbook of
evidence-based management / Edwin A. Locke, Craig L. Pearce.
Description: 3rd edition. | Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, 2023. | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022056231 (print) | LCCN 2022056232 (ebook) | ISBN
9781119828549 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119828617 (adobe pdf) | ISBN
9781119828600 (epub)
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658—dc23/eng/20230221
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 Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction xv

1 Select on Intelligence 1
Frank L. Schmidt and In-­Sue Oh

2 Select on Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability 27

Michael K. Mount and Murray R. Barrick

3 Structure Interviews to Recruit and Hire the Best People 47

Cynthia Kay Stevens

4 Attain Emotional Control by Understanding What Emotions Are 65

Edwin A. Locke

5 Motivate Employee Performance Through Goal Setting 83

Gary P. Latham

6 Cultivate Self-­Efficacy for Personal and Organizational Effectiveness 113

Albert Bandura

Locke828549_ftoc.indd v 29 Mar 2023 07:14:25 pm

 vi Contents

7 Pay for Performance 137

Kathryn M. Bartol

8 Promote Job Satisfaction Through Mental Challenge 161

Timothy A. Judge, Ryan Klinger, and Meng Li

9 Follow the Science to Make Training Work 179

Eduardo Salas and Kevin C. Stagl

10 Embed Performance Appraisals into Broader Performance

or Management Systems 211
Maria Rotundo and Kelly D. Murumets

11 Use Participation to Share Information and Distribute Knowledge 237

John A. Wagner III

12 Recognizing Employees 255

Jean M. Phillips, Kathryn E. Dlugos, and Hee Man Park

13 Sustain Organizational Performance Through Continuous

Learning, Change, and Realignment 271
Michael Beer

14 Empowerment’s Pivotal Role in Enhancing Effective Self-­and

Shared Leadership 293
Jay A. Conger and Craig L. Pearce

15 Effective Use of Power and Influence Tactics in Organizations 311

Gary Yukl

16 Engage in Visionary Leadership 329

David A. Waldman

17 Foster Trust Through Ability, Benevolence, and Integrity 345

Jason A. Colquitt and Michael D. Baer

18 Teamwork in Organizations: The Best Teams Learn, Adapt, and

Are Resilient 365
Allison M. Traylor, Scott Tannenbaum, Eric J. Thomas, and Eduardo Salas

Locke828549_ftoc.indd vi 29 Mar 2023 07:14:25 pm

 Contents vii

19 Compose Teams to Ensure Successful External Activity 387

Deborah Ancona, Henrik Bresman, and David Caldwell

20 Manage Intrateam Conflict Through Collaboration 403

Laurie R. Weingart, Karen A. Jehn, and Kori L. Krueger

21 Clarity, Conciseness, and Consistency Are the Keys to Effective

Communication 429
Jean Phillips, Kameron M. Carter, and Dorothea Roumpi

22 Stimulate Creativity by Fueling Passion 443

Colin M. Fisher and Teresa M. Amabile

23 Manage Stress at Work Through Preventive and Proactive Coping 463

Ralf Schwarzer and Tabea Reuter

24 Conflict Resolution Through Negotiation and Mediation 483

Kevin Tasa and Ena Chadha

25 Achieve Entrepreneurial Growth Through Swiftness

and Experimentation 503
Jaume Villanueva, Harry J. Sapienza, and J. Robert Baum

26 Achieve Work-Family Balance Through Individual

and Organizational Strategies 531
Malissa A. Clark, Katelyn N. Sanders, and Boris B. Baltes

27 Use Advanced Information Technology to Transform Organizations 551

Dongyeob Kim, Maryam Alavi, and Youngjin Yoo, Ph.D.

28 Make Management Practice Fit National Cultures

and the Global Culture 575
Miriam Erez

29 Strategy and Structure for Effectiveness 595

John Joseph and Metin Sengul

Index621

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Locke828549_ftoc.indd viii 29 Mar 2023 07:14:25 pm
 Preface

Our goal with this book was to bring together comprehensive, science-­based, ac-
tionable advice, from the world’s leading experts, for managing organizations. We
deliver on this goal.
There are 29 chapters in this book, each dedicated to a specific management
challenge. The chapters are written by the foremost thinkers on the topics. The
authors hone in on the key principle for their respective topics – the key piece of
advice – for turning knowledge into action. All of their advice is solidly based upon
science. In other words, you can have confidence in their advice.
Our book is in stark contrast to “normal” textbooks, which provide endless lists of
factoids to memorize about topics. Such books are of little value if the reader desires
to apply the information to real-­world situations. It is difficult to glean from such
lists exactly what one should implement – in this book, we prioritize knowledge into
overarching principles, which facilitates the implementation of concrete actions in
real-­world situations.
Books in the “popular press,” on the other hand, generally offer pithy advice
from self-­declared experts, but these books generally have little to no basis in sci-
ence. These types of books are typically easy to read and do attempt to provide
ideas to put into action. Nonetheless, the advice provided is largely overly specific
to the author’s experience and thus lacks transferability to the circumstances of the
reader. As such, while these types of books are generally engaging, they are best
regarded as nonfiction stories, with limited practical value.
Our book is different. It combines science and action. The range of subjects is
expansive, encompassing 29 areas – ranging from selection, to motivation, to lead-
ership, and all topics in between. In the section on selection, for instance, there are
chapters on how to select based on intelligence (In-­Sue Oh and Frank Schmidt),
how to select based on personality (Murray Barrick and Michael Mount), and the
proper use of interviews (Cynthia Stevens). In the section on motivation, there are
chapters on how to manage emotions (Edwin Locke), how to implement goal set-
ting (Gary Latham), how to cultivate self-­efficacy (Albert Bandura), how to pay for
performance (Kathryn Bartol), and how to enhance satisfaction (Timothy Judge,
Ryan Klinger, and Meng Li).
In the section on the development of employees, there are chapters on the science of
training and development (Eduardo Salas and Kevin Stagl), how to use performance

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 x Preface

appraisals (Maria Rotundo and Kelly Murumets), how to use employee p ­ articipation
(John Wagner), how to use recognition (Jean Phillips, Kathryn Dlugos, and Hee
Man Park), and how to foster continuous learning (Michael Beer). In the section on
leadership, there are chapters on how to empower effectively (Jay Conger and Craig
Pearce), the proper use of power and influence (Gary Yukl), how to create unifying
vision (David Waldman), and how to foster trust (Jason Colquitt and Michael Baer).
In the section on teams, there are chapters on diagnosing and understanding
team processes (Allison Traylor, Scott Tannenbaum, Eric Thomas, and Eduardo­
Salas), how to manage the boundaries of teams (Deborah Ancona, Henrik Bresman,
and David Caldwell), and how to manage intrateam conflict (Laurie Weingart,
Karen Jehn, and Kori Krueger). In the section on micro-­organizational processes,
there are chapters on how to communicate effectively (Jean Phillips, Kameron
Carter, and Dorothea Roumpi), how to stimulate creativity (Colin Fisher and Teresa
Amabile), how to manage stress (Ralf Schwarzer and Tabea Reuter), and how to
negotiate effectively (Kevin Tasa and Ena Chadha).
In the section on macro-­organizational processes, there are chapters on how to
foster entrepreneurship (Jaume Villanueva, Harry Sapienza, and J. Robert Baum),
how to integrate work and family (Malissa Clark, Katelyn Sanders, and Boris
Baltes), how to use information technology effectively (Dongyeob Kim, Maryam
Alavi, and Youngjin Yoo), how to navigate organizational and international culture
(Miriam Erez), and how to align organizational strategy and structure (John Joseph
and Metin Sengul).
Something that both teachers and students will appreciate about this book is
that the chapters contain cases and exercises to help to illustrate the material. For
example, the chapters have cases that demonstrate both the positive and negative
applications of the primary principle of the chapter. The cases exhibit the con-
crete application of the chapter principle to the real world, which enables deeper
understanding, as well as a degree of practice for the implementation of the princi-
ple in future situations.
The chapters also contain skill sharpening exercises to reinforce the knowledge
of the topic at hand. The types of exercises vary by chapter. Some exercises, for in-
stance, involve a degree of role playing, to facilitate the understanding of how the
principles play out in action. Other exercises involve, in part, completing question-
naires, helping the readers understand where they fall on a particular dimension.
Additional exercises are focused on watching and diagnosing videos pertaining to
the principles. Together, all of the exercises complement the core reading of the
chapters, buttressing the development of knowledge about the principles.
On a more somber note, since the passing of Sabrina Salam, the rising star who
wrote a chapter for the first edition of this book (which is now updated by Jason
Colquitt and Michael Baer), two of the contributors to the current edition, Frank
Schmidt and Albert Bandura, passed away during the process of writing their chap-
ters. Both were giants in the field of organizational science.
Frank Schmidt was known for many advances in organizational science, but
most notably for his cutting-­edge work on employee selection and for his definitive

Locke828549_fpref.indd x 29 Mar 2023 07:14:50 pm

 Preface xi

contributions on research methods. His chapter in this book is focused on the

importance of intelligence in employee selection. He and his coauthor, In-­Sue Oh,
distilled the knowledge on this topic, which will leave a lasting mark well into the
future.
Albert Bandura was the giant among giants. At the time of his passing, he was,
by far, the most widely cited organizational scientist. His contributions were deep
and broad. Nonetheless, he was best known for his work on social cognitive theory
and on the concept of self-­efficacy. His work provides the foundation for most other
organizational science. His chapter in this book provides a stake in the ground for
transferring his knowledge to the practice of management.
In sum, our book provides comprehensive advice, based on science, written by
the foremost experts, for practicing and aspiring managers. Each chapter focuses
on a core principle that can be applied, with confidence, in real-­world organiza-
tions. In many ways, one can think of this book as a roadmap to organizational suc-
cess. We hope you enjoy reading it. More importantly, we hope you find success in
applying the principles in action.

Locke828549_fpref.indd xi 29 Mar 2023 07:14:50 pm

Locke828549_fpref.indd xii 29 Mar 2023 07:14:50 pm
 Acknowledgments

The editors are grateful to many people, not the least of whom are the contributors
to this book. It could not have happened without their ability to distill the principles
of organizational behavior from science-­based evidence. The editors would also like
to specifically acknowledge the exceptional work of Jeremy Sanville, Craig Pearce’s
research assistant, in bringing this book to fruition – he worked tirelessly in keeping
everything coordinated and on track, from beginning to end.
 Introduction1

This handbook is about management principles; each chapter is written by an

expert in the field – but why do we need principles?
To quote Ayn Rand (1982, p. 5):

. . . abstract ideas are conceptual integrations which subsume an incalculable

number of concretes – and without abstract ideas you would not be able to deal
with concrete, particular, real-­life problems. You would be in the position of a
newborn infant, to whom every object is a unique, unprecedented phenomenon.
The difference between his mental state and yours lies in the number of concep-
tual integrations your mind has performed.

You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your ex-
periences, your knowledge into abstract principles.

What, then, is a principle? A “principle” is a general truth on which other truths

depend. Every science and every field of thought involves the discovery and applica-
tion of principles. A principle may be described as a fundamental reached by induc-
tion (Peikoff, 1982, p. 218).
Everyday examples of principles that we use (or should use) in everyday life are:

“Be honest” (a moral principle)

“Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables” (a nutrition principle)
“Exercise regularly” (a health principle)
“Save for the future” (a personal finance principle)
“Do a conscientious job” (a work or career principle)
“Do not drive under the influence of alcohol or text while driving” (personal
safety principles)

It would be literally impossible to survive for long if one did not think in terms
of principles, at least implicitly. In terms of concrete details, every situation is dif-

1
This introduction is adapted from Locke (2002). I thank Jean Binswanger,
Paul Tesluk, Cathy Durham, and James Bailey for their helpful comments on the
original article.
xvi INTRODUCTION

ferent from every other. Suppose, for example, that a child were told, “Do not run
across that part of this street today.” What is the child to do on other days? On other
streets? On other parts of the same street? Such a dictum would be useless to the
child after the day had passed or if they were in another location. Properly, the child
(at the right age) would be taught a principle such as “Never cross any street without
first looking twice in each direction.” This could guide the child’s actions for life
and in every location in the world.
How are principles formulated? They are formulated by integrating conceptual
knowledge (for more on concept formation, see Locke, 2002 and Peikoff, 1991).
Principles, in turn, are integrated into theories, again by induction (Locke, 2007).

Teaching

The use of principles is critical to both the teaching and practice of management.
Let us begin with teaching. Most instructors would agree that management is a
difficult subject to teach. First, it is very broad in scope. It entails scores if not hun-
dreds of different aspects. The more one studies the field, the more complex and
bewildering it seems to become. Second, there are no concrete rules or formulas
to teach as in the case of accounting, finance, or management science. Manage-
ment is as much an art as a science. Third, although there are theories pertaining
to different aspects of management (e.g. leadership), many find these theories to
be less than satisfactory (to put it tactfully), because they are too narrow, trivial, or
esoteric and/or lack firm evidential support. Often, they are based on deduction
rather than induction (Locke, 2006). The potentially useful theories are mixed in
with those that are not.
Traditionally, teaching has been done with either textbooks and/or the case
method. Both methods contain the same epistemological limitation. Textbooks,
because they try to be comprehensive, pile up detail after detail and theory after
theory, but the details, even of subtopics, are very difficult to integrate. As noted,
any theories that are presented often have severe limitations because they come and
go like snowflakes. The result is that students routinely suffer from massive cognitive
overload and a sense of mental chaos; thus, little of the material is retained once the
final exam is over. This makes it unlikely that what was memorized will be applied to
the students’ jobs and career.
With regard to case studies, these allow for the possibility of induction, but shock-
ingly, it has been reported that some business schools openly prohibit connecting
the cases to each other. This is very unfortunate. Each case is a unique, concrete
instance. Suppose, for example, a business student concluded from the analysis of a
particular case study that a certain high technology firm in New Hampshire should
replace the CEO, develop a top management team, and change to a matrix struc-
ture. What could students take away from such an analysis that would help them be
better managers? Nothing at all if the analysis were left in this form. The case would
only be useful if the student could formulate some general principles from studying
a variety of cases. The best way to do this is by induction from a series of cases (see
Locke, 2002 for a detailed example) though even this could be limited depending
 INTRODUCTION xvii

on the choice of cases. Faculty whom I knew who used cases have admitted to me
that they have to use theoretical materials (e.g. principles) for the students to be
able to even analyze the cases in the first place.
The value of this book for teaching, therefore, is twofold. First, it is an alternative
to a traditional textbook. The material in this book is essentialized. Only what the expert
chapter writers consider important is included; thus, there is far less to remember
than in a text. This means the material can be more easily retained and more read-
ily applied to the real world of work. Second, the principles are evidence-­based and thus
tied firmly to reality. This teaching procedure would be mainly deductive, because
the inductively based principles would be provided in advance (by this book) and
students would have practice applying them to the exercises at the end of each
chapter, and/or to their current (and later their future) jobs. Of course, students
could be asked to search out other examples of principles and how they were used
or not used.
Second, this book can be used as an adjunct to a course which uses cases. Here,
both deduction and induction can be used. The book’s principles can help students
to analyze the cases, yet new principles (or qualifications to principles) could be
developed through induction from the cases used.
(There are other problems with the case method that we can only note briefly
here, e.g. the emphasis on verbal glibness; the fact that all the information needed
is already in the case; the fact that the case is taken out of a wider organizational
context; the fact that real action is not possible; and the lack of face-­to-­face contact
with actual employees. Primarily, these problems are inherent in the attempt to
teach a practical skill in a classroom and so have no perfect solution, though student
mini projects within real businesses help).

Management

This book can also help managers and executives be more effective. However, read-
ing a book of evidence-­based principles does not magically turn one into a good
manager. Principles cannot be mastered overnight and cannot be applied mechani-
cally. Regardless of the level of abstraction at which they are formulated, they are
still abstractions, not concrete rules such as “turn off the lights when you leave the
room.” Principles, however, are used to guide specific actions in specific contexts.
Consider the principle: “Motivate performance through goal setting” (Chapter 5
of this book). This principle does not tell one what to set goals for (a very critical
issue); who is to set them; what the time span will be; what strategy to use to reach
them; how performance will be measured; how flexible the goals will be; or how per-
formance will be rewarded. (The latter involves another principle; see Chapter 7).
To some extent, formulating subprinciples can be a help because these would
give some idea of how to implement the principles. For example, subprinciples for
goals (given in Chapter 5) would include (i) make the goals clear and challenging;
(ii) give feedback showing progress in relation to the goals; (iii) get commitment
through building confidence and showing why the goals are important; (iv) develop
action plans or strategies; (v) use priming; and (vi) find and remove organizational
xviii INTRODUCTION

blocks to goal attainment. But these subprinciples do not tell one everything. There
will always be judgment calls to be made, because one cannot teach every possible
context factor that a future manager might face.
Furthermore, principles cannot be applied in a vacuum, or one at a time in some
arbitrary order. Many – maybe dozens or possibly hundreds – of principles must be
used to run a successful business. (The problem of cognitive overload is mitigated
over time by gradually automatizing the principles in the subconscious.) Further-
more, the principles must be orchestrated so that they function in concert rather
than working at cross-­purposes. It is not known how effectively one can teach such
orchestration, although one can make the student aware of the issue and give some
examples. For example, the goal system must be integrated with the performance
appraisal system and the reward system.
It is worth observing here how principles are used in the real world of manage-
ment. We will use Jack Welch as an example in that he is considered among the
greatest CEOs in history, the creator of $300–400 billion in stockholder wealth at
General Electric (e.g. see Slater, 1999; Tichy and Sherman, 1993). Some principles
that Welch used as his personal guides to action are as follows:

◆◆ Reality. Face reality as it really is, not as you want it to be. (We believe that the
failure to practice this principle is a major cause of business failures, e.g.
Enron. Such failures may involve flagrant dishonesty, but they also may involve
simple evasion – the refusal to look at pertinent facts – or putting emotions
ahead of facts.)
◆◆ Change before you have to (view change as an opportunity, not as a threat).
◆◆ Possess energy and energize others.

Welch also helped develop a code of values or guiding principles for GE as a

whole. These included integrity (backed up by control systems).
Obviously, Welch was able not only to formulate but also to apply and orches-
trate principles in a way that no one else had. It helped that he had ambition and
energy, a brilliant business mind, an insatiable curiosity, the capacity to judge tal-
ent, and an uncanny ability to figure out what businesses GE should and should
not be in.
It is interesting that Jacques Nasser was a great admirer of Welch and tried to
emulate his principles at Ford but was unable to do so and ultimately lost his job. It
is clear that there is a long road between knowing good principles and being able to
implement them successfully in the context of a given organization.
Management principles need to be organized and integrated hierarchically so
that the leader will know what to do first, second, and so forth. Except for facing re-
ality as it is (not evading), which should be the primary axiom of every manager, the
hierarchy may not be the same from business to business or in the same business at
different times. Nor will they all be organizational behavior principles. For example,
in one context, the most critical factor may be to decide, as Welch did, what business
or businesses a corporation should be in. This is an aspect of vision and strategic
management. There is no point in trying to manage the wrong business or working
hard to do the wrong thing. But in another context, the critical issue may be cash
 INTRODUCTION xix

flow, for example, how to avoid bankruptcy in the next six months (a finance issue).
In a different context, the core problem might be getting the right people in the
right jobs or revamping the incentive system (HR issues).
What factors would determine the hierarchy? Three are critical: (i) Context.
What are the most important facts regarding the present situation of this company?
­Context means seeing the whole and the relationship of the parts to the whole.
(ii) Urgency. What has to be fixed right away if the company is to survive?
(iii) Fundamen­tality. What is the cause of most of the different problems the organi-
zation is faced with or what must be fixed before any other fixes will work (e.g. get
good people in key jobs)?
The hierarchy can change over time. For example, when Welch took over at GE,
he focused first on changing the business mix (selling and buying businesses) and
cutting costs (increasing productivity) and layers of management. Later, he focused
on better utilizing people (empowerment) and still later on improving quality (qual-
ity goals). Reversing the sequence would not have worked, because empowerment
and quality would not help businesses that were not viable and would not “take” in
a ponderous bureaucracy.
The foregoing is to make an important point for the second time: Business is an
art as much as a science. Having correct principles will not work unless the leader
knows how and when to use them. Great leaders are rare because not many of them
can effectively perform all the tasks that leadership requires (Locke, 2003).
The way to manage complexity is not to complexify it, as academics love to do.
After reading some six books about and one book by Jack Welch, we were struck by
how frequently he stressed the importance of simplicity. He said:

Simplicity is a quality sneered at today in cultures that like their business con-
cepts the way they like their wine, full of nuance, subtlety, complexity, hints of
this and that . . . cultures like that will produce sophisticated decisions loaded
with nuance and complexity that arrive at the station long after the train has
gone . . . you can’t believe how hard it is for people to be simple, how much they
fear being simple. They worry that if they’re simple, people will think they are
simpleminded. In reality, of course, it’s just the reverse. Clear, tough-­minded
people are the most simple (quoted in Lowe, 1998, p. 155).

Consider a recent conversation with a consultant who works as a coach to top

executives. He told one of us that one question he always asks in the first meeting
is “By the way, how do you make money?” The ones who answered by wallowing in
complexity usually did not make any. The ones who gave succinct, clear answers
usually did.
For a business leader, achieving simplicity, as opposed to simplemindedness,
is much harder than achieving complexity. To achieve simplicity, one must look
through the morass of complexity one is seemingly faced with, integrate the key
observations, and come up with the essential ideas that will make one’s business suc-
ceed. That is, one must bring order out of chaos. This includes knowing what to
ignore. The way to do this is to think inductively and integrate one’s observations
into principles.
xx INTRODUCTION

Notes Regarding the Third Edition

The third edition of this book includes the following changes: (i) there are new
chapters with new authors and some new authors for some of the original chapters;
(ii) all the chapters have been updated with respect to the latest research, and near-
ly all present new cases examples; typically, however, the original principles have
remained the same (or been slightly reformulated); (iii) all the chapters now have
exercises at the end to help students better understand the principles. Although
authors were asked to title their chapters in terms of a single principle, a few have
two or three related principles, and all have subprinciples.
This last relates to the issue of what the appropriate level of abstraction should be
for management principles. If they are formulated too broadly (e.g. “be rational”),
it can be hard to connect them to specific actions without very extensive elabora-
tion. On the other hand, if they are too narrow (“turn out the light when leaving
every room”), they are not broadly applicable, and one would need thousands of
them – too many to retain – to cover the waterfront. Thus, I encouraged mid-­range
principles and the authors thankfully complied.
In closing, we should note that the principles in this book do not include all
­possible management principles (e.g. none of the chapters discussed strategic man-
agement principles – that would be another book). Also, we do not include the race
issue because that is much too complex an issue to be dealt with in one chapter. That
topic would require a whole book. We chose topics from I/O psychology, human
resource management, and organizational behavior (fields that all overlap) that
I thought would be of most interest and use to present and future managers. I hope
these hopefully timeless principles will contribute to your success at work.

References

Locke, E. A. (2002). The epistemological side of teaching management: Teaching

through principles. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 1, 195–­205.
Locke, E. A. (2003). Foundations for a theory of leadership. In S. Murphy and
R. Riggio (eds), The Future of Leadership Development. Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum.
Locke, E. A. (2006). Business ethics: A way out of the morass. Academy of Management
Learning & Education, 5(3), 324–332.
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New York: Currency Doubleday.
 1
Select on Intelligence
Frank L. Schmidt1 and In-­Sue Oh2

1
University of Iowa
2
Temple University

Co-author’s Note

Frank Schmidt died on 21 August, 2021 in Iowa City, IA. I am greatly indebted to
him for his legacy in intelligence testing and meta-­analysis, intellectual honesty and
courage, and endless support and mentoring over the years. He will be forever re-
membered and forever missed.
The principle that we wish to convey in this chapter is quite simple: Ceteris pari-
bus, higher intelligence leads to better job performance. Intelligence is the best
determinant of job performance, and hiring people based on intelligence leads
to marked improvements in job performance. These performance improvements
have great economic value for organizations, giving organizations that hire people
based on intelligence a leg-­up over other organizations. This principle is incredibly
broad and generalizable as it has been empirically validated across numerous jobs,
occupations, and industries.
But before elaborating further on this principle, we would like to emphasize
that, surprisingly, most human resource (HR) managers do not hire based on in-
telligence. In fact, most HR managers do not make decisions based on research-­
informed best practices at all (Rynes, Colbert, and Brown, 2002). This gap between
practice and research findings is especially large in the area of staffing, where many
HR managers are unaware of this most fundamental staffing principle based on
extensive research findings and, as a result, fail to use scientifically established valid
employment selection procedures. You may think that this is true only for a small
portion of HR managers, but this is not the case.
In a survey of 5000 Society for Human Resource Management members whose
title was at the manager level and above, Rynes and her research team (2002) asked
two questions relevant to this chapter:

(a) Is conscientiousness, a personality trait, a better predictor of employee per-

formance than intelligence?
(b) Do companies that screen job applicants for values have higher performance
than those that screen for intelligence?
2 FRANK L. SCHMIDT AND IN-­SUE OH

The answer to both the questions is (definitely) no!1 But shockingly, 72% of re-
spondents answered yes to the first question and 57% answered yes to the second
question. That is, on average, two-­thirds of the respondents did not know the most
basic principle established by extensive research findings; namely, that intelligence
is the single best predictor of employee job performance. And worse, these were
largely HR managers and directors with an average 14 years of work experiences
in HR. Of the 959 respondents, 53% were HR managers, directors, and vice presi-
dents, occupying an important role in designing and implementing HR practices.
Given the respondents’ high-­level HR positions and considerable experience, we
speculate that the percentage of wrong answers would be even higher among less
experienced HR staff. This problem is not limited to the United States but is also
widely observed in other countries (e.g. Tenhiälä, Giluk, Kepes, Simon, Oh, and
Kim, 2016). Thus, we believe that many would benefit by reading this chapter.

What Is Intelligence?

The concept of intelligence is often misunderstood. Intelligence is not the ability to

adapt to one’s environment: Insects, mosses, and bacteria are well adapted to their
environments, but they are not intelligent. There are many ways in which organisms
can adapt well to their environments, of which intelligence is only one. Instead, intel-
ligence encompasses the ability to understand and process abstract concepts to solve
problems. Gottfredson (1997, p. 13), in an editorial originally published in the Wall
Street Journal and later reprinted in Intelligence, defined intelligence as “a very general
mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve
problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, and learn quickly and learn
from experience.” This traditional definition captures well what intelligent people
can do, but this definition is still insufficient in capturing why smart people can do
it. For the purposes of this chapter, we define intelligence as the capacity to learn and
retain complex information. Higher levels of intelligence lead to more rapid learning,
and the more complex the material to be learned, the more this is true. Intelligence
is often referred to as general mental ability (GMA), and we use the terms “intelli-
gence” and “GMA” interchangeably throughout the remainder of this chapter.2

1
With regard to the first question, the validity of conscientiousness measured via
self-­reports is 0.22, whereas that of General Mental Ability is 0.65 in predicting
supervisory ratings of job performance (Schmidt, Shaffer, and Oh, 2008). With
regard to the second question, the answer exists only at the individual level, not at
the company level. Arthur, Bell, Villado, and Doverspike’s (2006) meta-­analysis has
shown that the validity of person-organization fit (or value congruence) is 0.13,
even less than that of conscientiousness measured via self-­reports.
2
In the applied psychology and HR/OB literatures, another term, “cognitive ability”
is widely used.
 Select on Intelligence 3

Another important nature of intelligence is that it is the broadest of all human

mental abilities. Narrower abilities include verbal ability, quantitative ability, and spa-
tial ability. These narrower abilities are often referred to as special aptitudes. These
special aptitudes also predict job performance (although not as well as GMA), but
only because special aptitude tests measure general intelligence as well as specific
aptitudes (Brown, Le, and Schmidt, 2006). In other words, it is the GMA compo-
nent in these specific aptitude tests that predicts job performance. For example,
when a test of verbal ability predicts job or training performance, it is the GMA part
of that test – not specifically the verbal part – that primarily does the predicting, thus
“not much more than g (GMA)” (Brown et al., 2006; Ree and Earles, 1991, 1992;
Ree, Earles, and Teachout, 1994).
Finally, although behavioral geneticists have concluded that GMA is highly
influenced by heredity, it does not necessarily mean that nothing can improve
GMA (Gottfredson, 1997). A recent meta-­analysis by Ritchie and Tucker-­Drob
(2018) has reported that an additional year of education improves GMA by ap-
proximately one to five IQ points across the life span: “Education appears to be
the most consistent, robust, and durable method yet to be identified for raising
intelligence” (p. 1358).

Higher Intelligence Leads to Better Job Performance

Intelligence plays a central role in virtually all of our daily activities and lifelong
pursuits. It predicts many important life outcomes such as performance in school,
amount of education obtained, rate of promotion on the job, ultimate job level
attained, and salary (Gottfredson, 1997, 2002; Judge, Klinger, and Simon, 2010;
Schmidt and Hunter, 2004). More relevant to this chapter is that it predicts job and
training performance (Schmidt et al., 2008). No other trait predicts so many impor-
tant real-­world outcomes so well.
However, until several decades ago, most people believed that general princi-
ples of this sort were impossible in personnel selection and other social science
areas. It was believed that it was not possible to know which selection methods
would be most effective for a given organization unless a local validation study
was conducted for each job in that organization. This belief, called “situational
specificity,” was based on the fact that validity studies of the same selection proce-
dures in different jobs in the same organization and across different organizations
appeared to give different and often conflicting results. The differences were
attributed to the assumption that each job situation includes subtle yet signifi-
cantly different (i.e. situation-­specific) characteristics related to the nature of job
performance. Therefore, practitioners at that time (to the delight of consulting
firms) were advised to conduct time-­consuming and costly local validation tests
for virtually all jobs in all organizations to determine if a selection procedure was
valid (Ghiselli, 1966).
4 FRANK L. SCHMIDT AND IN-­SUE OH

We now know that these “conflicting results” were caused mostly by statistical and
measurement artifacts (e.g. sampling error3), and that some selection procedures
(e.g. intelligence) have higher validity for predicting performance than others (e.g.
age, graphology) across all jobs (Schmidt and Hunter, 1981, 1998). This discovery
was made possible by a new method, called meta-­analysis or validity generalization,
that allows practitioners and researchers to statistically synthesize the results from
individual studies.4 Many meta-­analyses synthesizing numerous individual studies
based on data collected from various jobs, occupations, organizations, industries,
business sectors, and countries all point to the same conclusion that intelligence is
the single best predictor of job performance (Schmidt et al., 2008). Thus, there
is little to no need to conduct a local validation study to see whether intelligence is
predictive of job performance.
Below, we will briefly review some notable studies among the vast body of lit-
erature documenting the strong link between intelligence and job performance.
Ree and colleagues have shown this for jobs in the Air Force (Olea and Ree, 1994;
Ree and Earles, 1991, 1992; Ree et al., 1994), as have McHenry, Hough, Toquam,
­Hanson, and Ashworth (1990) for the US Army in the famous Project A study. (With
a budget of 24 million dollars, Project A is the largest test validity study ever con-
ducted.) Hunter and Hunter (1984) showed this link for a wide variety of civilian
jobs, using the US Employment Service database of studies. Schmidt, Hunter, and
Pearlman (1980) have documented the link in both civilian and military jobs. Other
large meta-­analytic studies are described in Hunter and Schmidt (1996), Schmidt
(2002), and Schmidt and Hunter (2004). Salgado and his colleagues (Salgado,
Anderson, Moscoso, Bertua, and de Fruyt, 2003a; Salgado, Anderson, Moscoso, Bertua,
de Fruyt, and Rolland, 2003b) demonstrated the link between GMA and job per-
formance across a variety of settings in European countries. Further, the strong link
between GMA and job performance was found whether performance was measured
objectively – via work samples or productivity records – or subjectively – using rank-
ings of performance ratings (Nathan and Alexander, 1988). Finally, the validity of

3
The sampling error is the error caused by using a (non-­representative, small) sam-
ple instead of the entire population of interest. Because of this error, sample-­based
statistics (validity coefficients) can be smaller or greater than their population
parameters, thus causing “conflicting results” (i.e. artifactual variance) across local
validation studies (Schmidt, 1992).
4
Meta-­analysis has also made possible the development of general principles in
many other areas beyond personnel selection (Schmidt and Hunter, 2015). For
example, it has been used to calibrate the relationships between job satisfaction and
job performance with precision (Judge, Thorensen, Bono, and Patton, 2001),
between organizational commitment and work-­related outcomes including job per-
formance (Cooper-­Hakim and Viswesvaran, 2005), and between transformational
leadership and employee, team, and firm performance (Wang, Oh, Courtright, and
Colbert, 2011).
 Select on Intelligence 5

GMA for predicting job performance does not differ across major ethnic groups
and gender groups (e.g. Roth, Le, Oh, Van Iddekinge, Buster, Robbins, and
Campion, 2014; Schmidt, 1988).
On a more technical note, there has recently been an important development
in the method of estimating the validity of a selection procedure by correcting for
range restriction more accurately.5 Applying this procedure to a group of existing
meta-­analytic data sets shows that previous figures for the validity of GMA (0.51 for
job performance and 0.56 for training performance as noted in Schmidt and Hunt-
er, 1998) underestimated its real value by around 30%. Specifically, when perfor-
mance is measured using ratings of job performance by supervisors, the average of
eight meta-­analytic correlations with intelligence measures is 0.65–65% as large as
the maximum possible value of 1.00, which represents perfect prediction (Schmidt
et al., 2008, table 1). Another performance measure that is important is the amount
learned in job training programs. For training performance (either based on exam
scores or instructor ratings), the average of eight meta-­analytic correlations with in-
telligence measures is 0.67 (Schmidt et al., 2008, table 2). Thus, the more accurate
estimate of validity of intelligence is even higher than we previously thought.

Why Does Higher Intelligence Lead

to Better Job Performance?
It is one thing to have overwhelming empirical evidence showing a principle is true
and quite another to explain why the principle is true. Although part of the answer
to this question of why higher intelligence leads to better performance in the defini-
tion of intelligence was discussed earlier (i.e. learning ability), a more convincing
answer can be found by examining the causal mechanism through which intelli-
gence influences job performance. According to Schmidt and Hunter (1998), peo-
ple who are more intelligent are able to hold greater amounts of job knowledge be-
cause they can learn more and more quickly than others. Hence, the more “direct”
determinant of job performance is job knowledge, not GMA.6 Said another way, the
biggest influence on job performance is job knowledge, and the biggest influence
on job knowledge is GMA. People who do not know how to do a job cannot per-
form that job well. Research has shown that considerable job knowledge is required
to perform even jobs most people would think of as simple, such as data entry.

5
A new and more accurate method for correcting the biases created by range restric-
tion has been developed and applied (see Hunter, Schmidt, and Le, 2006; Oh,
Schmidt, Shaffer, and Le, 2008; Schmidt, Oh, and Le, 2006; Schmidt et al., 2008).
(Range restriction is the condition in which the variance of the predictor [here
intelligence] in one’s sample of people [job incumbents] is lower than that in the
population of people [job applicants] for which one wants estimates.)
6
The traditional psychological theory of human learning (Hunter, 1986; Hunter
and Schmidt, 1996; Schmidt and Hunter, 2004) posits that the effect of GMA on job
performance would be mostly explained by the learning of job knowledge.
6 FRANK L. SCHMIDT AND IN-­SUE OH

More complex jobs require much more job knowledge. The simplest model of job per-
formance is this: GMA causes job knowledge, which in turn causes job performance.
But even this model is too simple, because GMA also directly influences job per-
formance. That is, GMA does not have to be converted to job knowledge before it
can influence job performance. In all professions, unforeseen problems arise that
are not covered by one’s prior education or a body of job knowledge (i.e. manuals),
and GMA is used directly to solve these problems. Based on two large samples (in
total, over 4500 managers), Dilchert and Ones (2009) found that problem-­solving
across various assessment center dimensions is most highly correlated with GMA.
That is, GMA is not only an ability to learn facts and structured procedures but also
an ability to tackle unstructured, real-­life problems and solve them. This means that
even when workers of varying levels of intelligence have equal job knowledge, the
more intelligent workers still have higher job performance given their advantage in
problem-­solving skills.
Many studies have tested and supported this causal model (Borman, White,
­Pulakos, and Oppler, 1991; Hunter, 1986; Ree et al., 1994; Schmidt, Hunter, and
Outerbridge, 1986). Using an extremely large data set from the US Army Selec-
tion and Classification Project (Project A), McCloy, Campbell, and Cudeck (1994)
differentiated two types of job knowledge – declarative knowledge and procedural
knowledge – and showed that GMA was related to each of the two types of job knowl-
edge, which was, in turn, related to job performance. This research is reviewed by
Hunter and Schmidt (1996) and Schmidt and Hunter (2004).

What Is Required to Make This Principle Work?

Based on research on selection procedure utility (Le, Oh, Shaffer, and Schmidt, 2007;
Schmidt and Hunter, 1998), there are three conditions that are required for com-
panies to improve job performance levels by using GMA tests in hiring and to reap
the resulting economic benefits.
First, the company must be able to be selective in who it hires. If the labor market
is so tight that all who apply for jobs must be hired, then there can be no selec-
tion and hence no gain. The gain in job performance per person hired is greatest
with low selection ratios. For example, if one company can afford to hire only the
top 10%, while another must hire the bottom 10% of all applicants, then with other
things equal the first company will have a much larger gain in job performance.
There is another way to look at this: Companies must provide conditions of employ-
ment that are good enough to attract more applicants than they need to fill the
vacant jobs. It is even better when they can go beyond that and attract not only a lot
of applicants, but the higher-­ability ones that are in that applicant pool. In addition,
to realize maximum value from GMA-­based selection, organizations must be able to
retain high-­performing hires. As discussed later in this chapter, one excellent way
to retain high-­intelligence employees is to place them in jobs consistent with their
levels of intelligence. Otherwise, high-­intelligence employees who are ill-­placed
(and thus not satisfied with their job) may look for alternatives outside the organi-
zation; if they leave, then the organization will incur enormous direct and indirect
costs (e.g. unpaid-­off selection and training costs, performance loss, low morale
among existing coworkers).
 Select on Intelligence 7

Second, the company must have some effective way of measuring GMA. The
most common and most effective method is a standardized employment test of
general intelligence, such as the Wonderlic Personnel Test, the Wesman Personnel
Classification Test, or the Watson-­Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal Form. Such
tests are readily available at modest cost. This method of measuring GMA is highly
cost-­effective given its excellent validity and reliability, low cost, and ease of admin-
istration and scoring. However, there are alternative methods of measuring intel-
ligence as listed as follows. We advise the reader that part of the reason that these
alternative methods can be somewhat successful is often due to their high correla-
tion with GMA. For example, meta-­analytic evidence has shown that grade point
average (Roth, Bevier, Switzer, and Schippmann, 1996), work sample tests (Roth,
Bobko, and McFarland, 2005), assessment center scores (Collins, Schmidt, Sanchez-­
Ku, Thomas, McDaniel, and Le, 2003), employment interviews (Huffcutt, Roth,
and McDaniel, 1996), and situational judgment tests (particularly, knowledge-­based
ones; McDaniel, Hartman, Whetzel, and Grubb, 2007) are moderately to strongly
correlated with GMA. That is, as Schmidt (2002) pointed out, performance on these
selection procedures is moderately to strongly a consequence of GMA and, hence,
reflects GMA. These findings further attest to the fact that what is more important
is the constructs (i.e. the traits themselves) measured during the selection process,
not the formats/methods (how the traits are measured). These alternative selection
procedures are generally less valid and more costly (especially assessment centers
and employment interviews) than standardized tests of GMA. Therefore, we recom-
mend that hiring managers simply use GMA tests whenever possible to maximize
cost-­effectiveness. However, many organizations that rarely use written GMA tests
build oral GMA tests into the interview process. For example, high-­tech companies
such as Microsoft and Google use multiple job interviews to measure GMA (and
other important characteristics) among their highly intelligent applicants perhaps
because standardized GMA tests are too easy for many of their highly intelligent ap-
plicants and, thus, cannot differentiate their applicants in terms of GMA. Moreover,
these highly profitable organizations may not care about selection costs.
Third, the variability in job performance among employees must be greater than
zero. That is, if all applicants after being hired have the same level of job perfor-
mance anyway, then nothing is gained by hiring “the best.” However, this is never
the case. Across all jobs studied, there have been large differences between differ-
ent workers in both quality and quantity of output. Hunter, Schmidt, and Judiesch
(1990) meta-­analyzed all the available studies on this topic and found large differ-
ence between employees. In unskilled and semi-­skilled jobs, they found that work-
ers in the top 1% of performance produced over three times as much output as
those in the bottom 1%. In skilled jobs, top workers produced 15 times as much
as bottom workers. In professional and managerial jobs, the differences were even
larger. At the CEO level, we can easily find many examples supporting huge perfor-
mance variability (e.g. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates). These are precisely the reasons why it
pays so handsomely to hire the best workers, managers, and CEOs.
But there is another advantage to hiring the best workers: the pool of talent
available for future promotion is greatly increased. This is of great value to organiza-
tions, because it helps ensure high performance all the way up through the ranks of
managers. When the right people are promoted, their value to the organization in
Another random document with
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 “Well, I’m glad you’ve got here. We’ve been having a picnic up at
the house. Julie’s been having the hysterics and MacDonald—you
never knew MacDonald, did you?”
Applegate listened politely. He had a curious feeling that Julie and
her hysterics were already very far away and unimportant to him, but
he did not wish to be so brutal as to show this.
“When did MacDonald return and where has he been?” he asked,
gravely.
“He got here yesterday. He says he had a shock or something in
that accident—anyhow, he just couldn’t remember anything, and
when he come to he didn’t know who he was, nor anything about
himself, and all his papers and clothes had been burnt, so there was
nothing to show anybody who he was. He could work, and he was all
right most ways. Says he was that way till about six months ago,
when a Frisco doctor got hold of him and did something to his head
that put him right. He has papers from the doctor to show it’s true.
His case attracted lots of attention out there. Of course he wrote to
Julie when he came to himself, but his letters went to our old
address and she never got them. So then he started East to see
about it. He says he’s got into a good business and is going to do
well.”
There was a long silence. Presently Hopson began again,
awkwardly:
“I don’t know how you feel about it, but I think Julie’d ought to go
back to him.”
Applegate’s heart began to beat in curious, irregular throbs; he
could feel the pulsing of the arteries in his neck and there was a
singing in his ears.
“Of course Julie agrees with you?” he said, thickly.
“Well, no; she don’t. That’s what she wanted me to talk to you
about. She can’t see it but one way. She says he died, or if he didn’t
it was the same thing to her, and she married you. She says nobody
can have two husbands, and it’s you who are hers. I told her the law
didn’t look at it that way, and she says then she must get a divorce
from MacDonald and remarry you. MacDonald says if she brings suit
on the ground of desertion he will fight it. He says he can prove it
ain’t been no wilful desertion. But probably he could be brought
round if he saw she wouldn’t go back to him anyhow. MacDonald
wouldn’t be spiteful. But he was pretty fond of Julie.”
Applegate had stopped suddenly in the middle of Hopson’s
speech. Now he went forward rapidly, but he made no answer.
Hopson scrutinized his face a moment before he continued:
“Julie says you won’t be spiteful either. She says maybe she was a
little hasty in what she said just before she came up here. But you
know Julie’s way.”
“Yes,” said Applegate, “I know Julie’s way.”
Hopson drew a breath of relief. He had at least discharged himself
of his intercessory mission.
“I tell Julie she’d better put up with it and go with MacDonald. The
life would be more the sort of thing she likes. But her head’s set and
she won’t hear to anything Henriette or I say. You see, that’s what
Julie holds by, what she thinks is respectable. And it’s about all she
does hold by.” He hesitated, groping blindly about in his
consciousness for words to express his feeling that this passionate,
reckless nature was only anchored to the better things of life by her
fervent belief in the righteousness of the established social order.
“Julie thinks everything of being respectable,” he concluded,
lamely.
“Is it much farther to your house?” asked Applegate, dully.
“Right here,” answered Hopson, pulling his key from his pocket.
They entered a crude little parlor whose carpet was too gaudy, and
whose plush furniture was too obviously purchased at a bargain, but
its air was none the less heavy with tragedy. A single gas-jet
flickered in the centre of the room. On one side a great, broad-
shouldered fellow sat doggedly with his elbows on his knees and his
face buried in his hands. There was resistance in every line of his
figure. On the sofa opposite was Julie in her crimson dress. As she
lifted her face eagerly, Applegate noticed traces of tears upon it. Mrs.
Hopson, who had been moving about the room aimlessly, a pale and
ineffective figure between these two vivid personalities, came to a
standstill and looked at Applegate breathlessly. For a moment no
one spoke. Then Julie, baffled by the eyes she could not read,
sprang to her feet and stretched out her hands with a vehement
gesture.
“John Applegate, you’ll put me right! You will. I know you will. I
can’t go back to him! How can I?” Her hungry eyes scrutinized his
still, inexpressive face.
“John, you aren’t going to turn me off?” Her voice had a despairing
passion in it. “You won’t refuse to marry me if I get the divorce?
Good God! You can’t be such a devil. John! oh, John!”
Applegate sat down and looked at her apathetically. He was not
used to being called a devil. Somehow it seemed to him the term
was misapplied.
“Don’t take on so, Julie,” he said, quietly. The room seemed to
whirl around him, and he added, with a palpable effort:
“I’ll think it over and try to do what is best for both of us.”
At that MacDonald lifted his sullen face from his hands for the first
time and glanced across at the other man with blood-shot eyes.
Then he rose slowly, his great bulk seeming to fill the room, and
walking over to Applegate’s chair stood in front of it looking down at
him. His scrutiny was long. Once Applegate looked up and met his
eyes, but he was too tired to bear their fierce light and dropped his
own lids wearily.
MacDonald turned from him contemptuously and faced his wife,
who averted her head.
“Look at me, Julie!” he cried, appealingly. “I am better worth it than
he is. Good Lord! I don’t see what you see in him. He’s so tame! Let
him go about his business. He’s nobody. He don’t want you. Come
along with me and we’ll lead a life! You shall cut a dash out there. I
can make money hand over fist. It’s the place for you. Come on!”
 For a moment Julie’s eyes glittered. The words allured her, but her
old gods prevailed. She threw out her arms as if to ward off his
proposal.
“No, no,” she said, shrilly. “I cannot make it seem right. You were
dead to me, and I married him. One does not go back to the dead. If
I am your wife, what am I to him? It puts me in the wrong these two
years. I cannot have it so, I tell you. I cannot have it so!”
Applegate felt faint and sick. Rising, he groped for the door. “I
must have air,” he said to Hopson, confusedly. “I will come back in a
minute.”
Once outside, the cool November night refreshed him. He dropped
down upon the doorstep and threw back his head, drinking in long
breaths as he looked up at the mocking stars.
When he found at last the courage to ask himself what he was
going to do, the answer was not ready. The decision lay entirely in
his hands. He might still be free if he said the word; and as he
thought of this he trembled. He had always tried to be what his
neighbors called a straight man, and he wanted to be straight in this
also. But where, in such a hideous tangle, was the real morality to be
found? Surely not in acceding to Julie’s demands! What claim had
she upon the home whose simple traditions of peace and happiness
she had trampled rudely under foot? Was it not a poor, cheap
convention of righteousness which demanded he should take such a
woman back to embitter the rest of his days and warp his children’s
lives? He rebelled hotly at the thought. That it was Julie’s view of the
ethical requirement of her position made it all the more improbable
that it was really right. Surely his duty was to his children first, and as
for Julie, let her reap the reward of her own temperament. The Lord
God Himself could not say that this was unjust, for it is so that He
deals with the souls of men.
It seemed to him that he had decided, but as he rose and turned to
the door a new thought stabbed him so sharply that he dropped his
lifted hand with a groan.
 Where had been that sense of duty to his children, just now so
imperative, in the days when he had yielded to Julie’s charm against
his better judgment? Had duty ever prevailed against inclination with
him? Was it prevailing now?
High over all the turmoil and desperation of his thoughts shone out
a fresh perception that mocked him as the winter stars had mocked.
For that hour at least, the crucial one of his decision, he felt assured
that in the relation of man and woman to each other lies the supreme
ethical test of each, and in that relation there is no room for
selfishness. It might be, indeed, that he owed Julie nothing, but
might it not also be that the consideration he owed all womankind
could only be paid through this woman he had called his wife? This
was an ideal with which he had never had to reckon.
He turned and sat him down again to fight the fight with a chill
suspicion in his heart of what the end would be.
Being a plain man he had only plain words in which to phrase his
decision when at last he came to it.
“I chose her and I’ll bear the consequences of my choice,” he said,
“but I’ll bear them by myself. His aunt will be glad to take Teddy, and
Dora is old enough to go away to school.” Then he opened the door.
Hopson and his wife had left the little parlor. Julie on the sofa had
fallen into the deep sleep of exhaustion. MacDonald still sat there,
with his head in his hands, and to him Applegate turned. At the
sound of his step the man lifted his massive head and shook it
impatiently.
“Well?” he demanded.
“The fact is, Mr. MacDonald, Julie and I don’t get along very well
together, but I don’t know as that is any reason why I should force
her to do anything that don’t seem right to her. She thinks it would be
more”—he hesitated for a word—“more nearly right to get a divorce
from you and remarry me. As I see it now, it’s for her to say what she
wants, and for you and me to do it.”
MacDonald looked at him piercingly.
 “You know you’d be glad of the chance to get rid of her!” he
exclaimed, excitedly. “In Heaven’s name, then, why don’t you make
her come to me? You know I suit her best. You know she’s my sort,
not yours. She’s as uncomfortable with you as you with her, and
she’d soon get over the feeling she has against me. Man! There’s no
use in it! Why can’t you give my own to me?”
“I can’t say I don’t agree with you,” said Applegate, and the words
seem to ooze painfully from his white lips, “but she thinks she’d
rather not, and—it’s for her to say.”
 A CONSUMING FIRE
He is a man who has failed in this life, and says he has no chance
of success in another; but out of the fragments of his failures he has
pieced together for himself a fabric of existence more satisfying than
most of us make of our successes. It is a kind of triumph to look as
he does, to have his manner, and to preserve his attitude toward
advancing years—those dreaded years which he faces with pale but
smiling lips.
If you would see my friend Hayden, commonly called by his friends
the connoisseur, figure to yourself a tall gentleman of sixty-five, very
erect still and graceful, gray-headed and gray-bearded, with fine gray
eyes that have the storm-tossed look of clouds on a windy March
day, and a bearing that somehow impresses you with an idea of the
gracious and pathetic dignity of his lonely age.
I myself am a quiet young man, with but one gift—I am a finished
and artistic listener. It is this talent of mine which wins for me a
degree of Hayden’s esteem and a place at his table when he has a
new story to tell. His connoisseurship extends to everything of
human interest, and his stories are often of the best.
The last time that I had the honor of dining with him, there was
present, besides the host and myself, only his close friend, that
vigorous and successful man, Dr. Richard Langworthy, the eminent
alienist and specialist in nervous diseases. The connoisseur
evidently had something to relate, but he refused to give it to us until
the pretty dinner was over. Hayden’s dinners are always pretty, and
he has ideals in the matter of china, glass, and napery which it would
require a woman to appreciate. It is one of his accomplishments that
he manages to live like a gentleman and entertain his friends on an
income which most people find quite inadequate for the purpose.
After dinner we took coffee and cigars in the library.
 On the table, full in the mellow light of the great lamp (Hayden has
a distaste for gas), was a bit of white plush on which two large opals
were lying. One was an intensely brilliant globe of broken gleaming
lights, in which the red flame burned strongest and most steadily; the
other was as large, but paler. You would have said that the prisoned
heart of fire within it had ceased to throb against the outer rim of ice.
Langworthy, who is wise in gems, bent over them with an
exclamation of delight.
“Fine stones,” he said; “where did you pick them up, Hayden?”
Hayden, standing with one hand on Langworthy’s shoulder, smiled
down on the opals with a singular expression. It was as if he looked
into beloved eyes for an answering smile.
“They came into my possession in a singular way, very singular. It
interested me immensely, and I want to tell you about it, and ask
your advice on something connected with it. I am afraid you people
will hardly care for the story as much as I do. It’s—it’s a little too
rococo and sublimated to please you, Langworthy. But here it is:
“When I was in the West last summer, I spent some time in a city
on the Pacific slope which has more pawnbrokers’ shops and that
sort of thing in full sight on the prominent streets than any other town
of the same size and respectability that I have ever seen. One day,
when I had been looking in the bazaars for something a little out of
the regular line in Chinese curios and didn’t find it, it occurred to me
that in such a cosmopolitan town there might possibly be some
interesting things in the pawn-shops, so I went into one to look. It
was a common, dingy place, kept by a common, dingy man with
shrewd eyes and a coarse mouth. Talking to him across the counter
was a man of another type. Distinction in good clothes, you know,
one is never sure of. It may be only that a man’s tailor is
distinguished. But distinction in indifferent garments is distinction
indeed, and there before me I saw it. A young, slight, carelessly
dressed man, his bearing was attractive and noteworthy beyond
anything I can express. His appearance was perhaps a little too
unusual, for the contrast between his soft, straw-colored hair and
wine-brown eyes was such a striking one that it attracted attention
from the real beauty of his face. The delicacy of a cameo is rough,”
added the connoisseur, parenthetically, “compared to the delicacy of
outline and feature in a face that thought, and perhaps suffering,
have worn away, but this is one of the distinctive attractions of the
old. You do not look for it in young faces such as this.
“On the desk between the two men lay a fine opal—this one,” said
Hayden, touching the more brilliant of the two stones. “The younger
man was talking eagerly, fingering the gem lightly as he spoke. I
inferred that he was offering to sell or pawn it.
“The proprietor, seeing that I waited, apparently cut the young man
short. He started, and caught up the stone. ‘I’ll give you—’ I heard
the other say, but the young man shook his head, and departed
abruptly. I found nothing that I wanted in the place, and soon passed
out.
“In front of a shop-window a little farther down the street stood the
other man, looking in listlessly with eyes that evidently saw nothing.
As I came by he turned and looked into my face. His eyes fixed me
as the Ancient Mariner’s did the Wedding Guest. It was an appealing
yet commanding look, and I—I felt constrained to stop. I couldn’t
help it, you know. Even at my age one is not beyond feeling the force
of an imperious attraction, and when you are past sixty you ought to
be thankful on your knees for any emotion that is imperative in its
nature. So I stopped beside him. I said: ‘It is a fine stone you were
showing that man. I have a great fondness for opals. May I ask if you
were offering it for sale?’
“He continued to look at me, inspecting me calmly, with a
fastidious expression. Upon my word, I felt singularly honored when,
at the end of a minute or two, he said: ‘I should like to show it to you.
If you will come to my room with me, you may see that, and another;’
and he turned and led the way, I following quite humbly and gladly,
though surprised at myself.
“The room, somewhat to my astonishment, proved to be a large
apartment—a front room high up in one of the best hotels. There
were a good many things lying about which obviously were not hotel
furnishings, and the walls, the bed, and even the floor were covered
with a litter of water-color sketches. Those that I could see were
admirable, being chiefly impressions of delicate and fleeting
atmospheric effects.
“I took the chair he offered. He stood, still looking at me,
apparently not in haste to show me the opals. I looked about the
room.
“‘You are an artist?’ I said.
“‘Oh, I used to be, when I was alive,’ he answered, drearily. ‘I am
nothing now.’ And then turning away he fetched a little leather case,
and placed the two opals on the table before me.
“‘This is the one I have always worn,’ he said, indicating the more
brilliant. ‘That chillier one I gave once to the woman whom I loved. It
was more vivid then. They are strange stones—strange stones.’
“He said nothing more, and I sat in perfect silence, only dreading
that he should not speak again. I am not making you understand
how he impressed me. In the delicate, hopeless patience of his face,
in the refined, uninsistent accents of his voice, there was somehow
struck a note of self-abnegation, of aloofness from the world,
pathetic in any one so young.
“I am old. There is little in life that I care for. My interests are
largely affected. Wine does not warm me now, and beauty seems no
longer beautiful; but I thank Heaven I am not beyond the reach of a
penetrating human personality. I have at least the ordinary instincts
for convention in social matters, but I assure you it seemed not in the
least strange to me that I should be sitting in the private apartment of
a man whom I had met only half an hour before, and then in a
pawnbroker’s shop, listening eagerly for his account of matters
wholly personal to himself. It struck me as the most natural and
charming thing in the world. It was just such chance passing
intercourse as I expect to hold with wandering spirits on the green
hills of paradise.
“It was some time before he spoke again.
“‘I saw her first,’ he said, looking at the paler opal, as if it was of
that he spoke, ‘on the street in Florence. It was a day in April, and
the air was liquid gold. She was looking at the Campanile, as if she
were akin to it. It was the friendly grace of one lily looking at another.
Later, I met her as one meets other people, and was presented to
her. And after that the days went fast. I think she was the sweetest
woman God ever made. I sometimes wonder how He came to think
of her. Whatever you may have missed in life,’ he said, lifting calm
eyes to mine, and smiling a little, ‘you whose aspect is so sweet,
decorous, and depressing, whose griefs, if you have griefs, are the
subtle sorrows of the old and unimpassioned’—I remember his
phrases literally. I thought them striking and descriptive,” confessed
Hayden—“‘I hope you have not missed that last touch of exaltation
which I knew then. It is the most exquisite thing in life. The Fates
must hate those from whose lips they keep that cup.’ He mused
awhile and added, ‘There is only one real want in life, and that is
comradeship—comradeship with the divine, and that we call religion;
with the human, and that we call love.’
“‘Your definitions are literature,’ I ventured to suggest, ‘but they are
not fact. Believe me, neither love nor religion is exactly what you call
it. And there are other things almost as good in life, as surely you
must know. There is art, and there is work which is work only, and
yet is good.’
“‘You speak from your own experience?’ he said, simply.
“It was a home thrust. I did not, and I knew I did not. I am sixty-five
years old, and I have never known just that complete satisfaction
which I believe arises from the perfect performance of distasteful
work. I said so. He smiled.
“‘I knew it when I set my eyes upon you, and I knew you would
listen to me and my vaporing. Your sympathy with me is what you
feel toward all forms of weakness, and in the last analysis it is self-
sympathy. You are beautiful, not strong,’ he added, with an air of
finality, ‘and I—I am like you. If I had been a strong man.... Christ!’
“I enjoyed this singular analysis of myself, but I wanted something
else.
“‘You were telling me of the opals,’ I suggested.
 “‘The opals, yes. Opals always made me happy, you know. While I
wore one, I felt a friend was near. My father found these in Hungary,
and sent them to me—two perfect jewels. He said they were the twin
halves of a single stone. I believe it to be true. Their mutual relation
is an odd one. One has paled as the other brightened. You see them
now. When they were both mine, they were of almost equal
brilliancy. This,’ touching the paler, ‘is the one I gave to her. You see
the difference in them now. Hers began to pale before she had worn
it a month. I do not try to explain it, not even on the ground of the old
superstition. It was not her fault that they made her send it back to
me. But the fact remains; her opal is fading slowly; mine is burning to
a deeper red. Some day hers will be frozen quite, while mine—mine
—’ his voice wavered and fell on silence, as the flame of a candle
fighting against the wind flickers and goes out.
“I waited many minutes for him to speak again, but the silence was
unbroken. At last I rose. ‘Surely you did not mean to part with either
stone?’ I said.
“He looked up as if from a dream. ‘Part with them? Why should I
sell my soul? I would not part with them if I were starving. I had a
minute’s temptation, but that is past now.’ Then, with a change of
manner, ‘You are going?’ He rose with a gesture that I felt then and
still feel as a benediction. ‘Good-by. I wish for your own sake that
you had not been so like my poor self that I knew you for a friend.’
“We had exchanged cards, but I did not see or hear of him again.
Last week these stones came to me, sent by some one here in New
York of his own name—his executor. He is dead, and left me these.
“It is here that I want your counsel. These stones do not belong to
me, you know. It is true that we are like, as like as blue and violet.
But there is that woman somewhere—I don’t know where; and I
know no more of their story than he told me. I have not cared to be
curious regarding it or him. But they loved once, and these belong to
her. Do you suppose they would be a comfort or a curse to her? If—if
—” the connoisseur evidently found difficulty in stating his position.
“Of course I do not mean to say that I believe one of the stones
waned while the other grew more brilliant. I simply say nothing of it;
but I know that he believed it, and I, even I, feel a superstition about
it. I do not want the light in that stone to go out; or if it should, or
could, I do not want to see it. And, besides, if I were a woman, and
that man had loved me so, I should wish those opals.” Here Hayden
looked up and caught Langworthy’s amused, tolerant smile. He
stopped, and there was almost a flush upon his cheek.
“You think I am maudlin—doting—I see,” he said. “Langworthy, I
do hope the Lord will kindly let you die in the harness. You haven’t
any taste for these innocent, green pastures where we old fellows
must disport ourselves, if we disport at all. Now, I want to know if it
would be—er—indelicate to attempt to find out who she is, and to
restore the stones to her?”
Langworthy, who had preserved throughout his usual air of strict
scientific attention, jumped up and began to pace the room.
“His name?” he said.
Hayden gave it.
“I know the man,” said Langworthy, almost reluctantly. “Did any
one who ever saw him forget him? He was on the verge of
melancholia, but what a mind he had!”
“How did you know him, Langworthy?” asked Hayden, with
pathetic eagerness.
“As a patient. It’s a sad story. You won’t like it. You had better keep
your fancies without the addition of any of the facts.”
“Go on,” said Hayden, briefly.
“They live here, you know. He was the only son. He unconsciously
acquired the morphine habit from taking quantities of the stuff for
neuralgic symptoms during a severe protracted illness. After he got
better, and found what had happened to him, he came to me. I had
to tell him he would die if he didn’t break it off, and would probably
die if he did. ‘Oh, no matter,’ he said. ‘What disgusts me is the idea
that it has taken such hold of me.’ He did break it off directly and
absolutely. I never knew but one other man who did that thing. But
between the pain and the shock from the sudden cessation of the
drug, his mind was unbalanced for awhile. Of course the girl’s
parents broke off the engagement. I knew they were travelling with
him last summer. It was a trying case, and the way he accepted his
own weakness touched me. At his own request he carried no money
with him. It was a temptation when he wanted the drug, you see. It
must have been at some such moment, when he contemplated
giving up the struggle, that you met him in the pawn-shop.”
“I am glad I knew enough to respect him even there,” murmured
Hayden, in his beard.
“Oh, you may respect him, and love him if you like. He died a
moral hero, if a mental and physical wreck. That is as good a way as
any, or ought to be, to enter another life—if there is another life.”
“And the woman?” asked the connoisseur.
“Keep the opals, Hayden; they and he are more to you than to her.
She—in fact it is very soon—is to marry another man.”
“Who is—”
“A gilded cad. That’s all.”
Langworthy took out his watch and looked at it. I turned to the
table. What had happened to the dreaming stones? Did a light flash
across from one to the other, or did my eyes deceive me? I looked
down, not trusting what I saw. One opal lay as pale, as pure, as
lifeless, as a moon-stone is. The other glowed with a yet fierier
spark; instead of coming from within, the color seemed to play over
its surface in unrestricted flame.
“See here!” I said.
Langworthy looked, then turned his head away sharply. The
distaste of the scientific man for the inexplicable and irrational was
very strong within him.
But the old man bent forward, the lamp-light shining on his white
hair, and with a womanish gesture caught the gleaming opal to his
lips.
“A human soul!” he said. “A human soul!”
 AN UNEARNED REWARD
It is the very last corner of the world in which you would expect to
find a sermon. Overhead hang the Colorado skies, curtains of
deepest, dullest cobalt, against which the unthreatening white clouds
stand out with a certain solidity, a tangible look seen nowhere else
save in that clear air. All around are the great upland swells of the
mountains, rising endlessly, ridge beyond ridge, like the waves of the
sea. In a hollow beside the glittering track is the one sign of human
existence in sight—the sun-scorched, brown railway station. It is an
insignificant structure planted on a high platform. There is a red tool-
chest standing against the wall; a tin advertisement of somebody’s
yeast-cakes is nailed to the clap-boards; three buffalo hides, with
horns still on them, hang over a beam by the coal-shed, and across
the side of the platform, visible only to those approaching from the
west, is written, in great, black letters:
THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH.
This legend had no place there on the September afternoon, some
years ago, when Carroll Forbes stepped off the west-bound express
as it halted a minute at the desolate spot. Because it looked to him
like the loneliest place in all the world the notion seized him
suddenly, as the train drew up beside the high platform, to catch up
his valise and leave the car. He was looking for a lonely place, and
looking helplessly. He snatched at the idea that here might be what
he sought, as a drowning man at the proverbial straw.
When the train had gone on and left him there, already repenting
tremulously of what might prove his disastrous folly, a man, who was
possibly the station agent—if this were indeed a station—came
limping toward him with an inquiring look.
Forbes was a handsome man himself, and thoroughly aware of
the value of beauty as an endowment. He was conscious of a half-
envious pang as he faced the blonde giant halting across the
platform. This was, or had been, a singularly perfect specimen of the
physical man. Over six feet in height, muscular, finely proportioned,
fair-haired and fair-skinned, with a curling, blonde beard, and big,
expressionless blue eyes, he looked as one might who had been
made when the world was young, and there was more room for
mighty men than now.
The slight, olive-skinned young man who faced him was conscious
of the sudden feeling of physical disadvantage that comes upon one
in the presence of imposing natural objects, for the man was as
august in his way as the cliffs and canyons.
“I am a—an artist,” said Carroll Forbes. “Is there any place
hereabouts where I can get my meals and sometimes a bed, while I
am sketching in the mountains?”
The man stared at him.
“Would it have been better if I had said I was a surveyor?” asked
Forbes of his confused inner consciousness.
“We feed folks here sometimes—that is, my wife does. Mebbe you
could have a shake-down in the loft. Or there’s Connor’s ranch off
north a ways. But they don’t care about taking in folks up there.”
“Then, if you would ask your wife?” ventured Forbes, politely. “I
shall not trouble you long,” he added.
“Ellen!”
A woman appeared at the door, then moving slowly forward, stood
at her husband’s side, and the admiration Forbes had felt at the sight
of the man flamed into sudden enthusiasm as he watched the wife.
She was tall, with heavy, black hair, great eyes like unpolished jet,
one of the thick white, smooth, perfectly colorless skins, which
neither the sun nor the wind affect, and clear-cut, perfect features.
Standing so, side by side, the two were singularly well worth looking
at.
“What a regal pair!” was Forbes’s internal comment; and while
they conferred together he watched them idly, wondering what their
history was, for of course they had one. It is safe to affirm that every
human creature cast in the mould of the beautiful has, or is to have,
one.
“She says you c’n stay,” announced the man. “Just put those traps
of yours inside, will you?” and, turning, he limped off the length of the
platform at a call from somebody who had ridden up with jingling
spurs.
Forbes, left to his own devices, picked up his valise, then set it
down again and looked around him helplessly, wondering if there
was a night train by which he could get away from this heaven-
forsaken spot.
“If you want to see where you can sleep,” said a voice at his side,
“I will show you.” It was the woman. She bent as she spoke to pick
up some of his impedimenta, but he hastily forestalled her with a
murmur of deprecation.
She turned and looked at him, and as he met her eyes it occurred
to him that the indifference of her face was the indifference of the
desert—arid and hopeless. The look she gave him was searching
and impersonal; he saw no reason for it, nor for the slow, dark color
that spread over her face, and there was less than no excuse for the
way she set her lips and stretched a peremptory hand, saying, “Give
me those,” in tones that could not be disobeyed. To his own
astonishment he surrendered them, and followed her meekly up a
ladder-like flight of steps to the rough loft over the station. It was
unfinished, but partitioned into two rooms. She opened the door of
one of these apartments, silently set his luggage inside, and
vanished down the stairs.
Forbes sat down on the edge of a broken chair and looked about
him.
“Now, in heaven’s name,” he demanded of the barren walls, “what
have I let myself in for, and why did I do it?”
To this question there seemed no sufficient answer, and for awhile
he sat there fretting with the futile anxiety of a man who knows that
his fate pursues him, who hopes that this turning or that may help
him to evade it, yet always feels the benumbing certainty that the
path he has taken is the shortest road to that he would avoid. When
at last—recognizing that his meditations were unprofitable—he rose
and went down the stairs, it was supper-time.
The woman was uncommunicative, but he could feel that her eyes
were on him. The man—it occurred to Forbes that he had probably
been drinking—was talkative. After the meal was over they went
outside. Forbes, by way of supporting his pretence of being an artist,
took out a pocket sketch-book and made notes of the values of the
clouds and the outlines of the hills against the sky in a sort of artistic
short-hand. The man Wilson sat down on a bench and began to talk.
Between the exciting effects of the whiskey he had taken, the
soothing influence of the cigar Forbes proffered him, and a natural
talent for communicativeness, he presently went on to tell his own
story. Forbes listened attentively. It seemed a part of the melodrama
of the whole situation and was as unreal to him as the flaming
miracle of the western skies or his own presence here.
“So the upshot of it all was that we just skipped out. She ran away
with me.”
It was a curious story. As Forbes listened he became aware that it
was one with which he had occasionally met in the newspapers, but
never in real life before. It was, apparently, the story of a girl
belonging to a family of wealth and possibly of high social traditions
—naturally he did not know what importance to attach to Wilson’s
boast that his wife belonged “to the top of the heap”—who had
eloped with the man who drove her father’s carriage.
The reasons for this revolt against the natural order of her life was
obscure; there was, perhaps, too high a temper on her side and too
strict a restraint on the part of her guardians. There was necessarily
a total absence of knowledge of life; there was also the fact that the
coachman was undoubtedly a fine creature to look at; there might
have been a momentary yielding on the part of a naturally dramatic
temperament to the impulse for the spectacular in her life.
But whatever the reasons, the result was the same. She had
married this man and gone away with him, and they had drifted
westward. And when they had gone so far west that coachmen of his
stamp were no longer in demand, he took to railroading, and from
brakeman became engineer; and finally, being maimed in an
accident in which he had stood by his engine while the fireman
jumped—breaking his neck thereby—he had picked up enough
knowledge of telegraphy to qualify him for this post among the
mountains. He and his handsome wife lived here and shared the
everlasting solitude of the spot together, and occasionally fed stray
travellers like this one who had dropped down on them to-day.
“He drinks over-freely and he swears profusely,” mused Forbes,
scrutinizing him, “but he is too big to be cruel, and he still worships
her beauty as she, perhaps, once worshipped his; and he still feels
an uncouth pride in all that she gave up for his sake.”
It had never occurred to him before to wonder what the after-life of
a girl who eloped with her father’s servant might be like. He
speculated upon it now. By just what process does a woman so
utterly déclassée adjust herself to her altered position? Would she
make it a point to forget, or would every reminder of lives, such as
her own had been, be a turning of the knife in her wound? Would not
a saving recollection of the little refinements of life cling longer to a
weak nature than to a strong one under such circumstances?
This woman apparently gave tongue to no vain regrets, for her
husband was exulting in the “grit” with which she had taken the
fortunes of their life. “No whine about her,” was his way of expressing
his conviction that the courage of the thoroughbred was in her.
“No, sir; there’s no whine about her. Un she’s never been sorry,
un, s’help me, she sha’n’t never be,” concluded Wilson. There were
maudlin tears in his eyes.
“Few men can say that of their wives,” said Forbes’s smooth,
sympathetic voice. “You are indeed fortunate.”
While her husband was repeating the oft-told tale of their conjugal
happiness, Ellen Wilson had done her after-supper work, and,
slipping out of the door, climbed the short, rocky spur to the north of
the station. Beyond the summit, completely out of sight and hearing,
there was a little hollow that knew her well, but never had it seen her
as it saw her now, when, throwing herself down, her face to the
earth, she shed the most scalding tears of all her wretched years.
They were such little things this stranger had done—things so
slight, so involuntary, so unconscious that they did not deserve the
name of courtesies, but they were enough to open the flood-gates of
an embittered heart. There was a world where all the men were
deferential and all the women’s lives were wrapped about with the
fine, small courtesies of life—formal, but not meaningless. It had
been her world once and now was so no longer.
Good or bad, she knew little and cared less, this man had come
from that lost world of hers, as she was made aware by a thousand
small signs, whose very existence she had forgotten; and silently,
fiercely she claimed him as an equal.
“I—I too was—” Slow tears drowned the rest.
She could have told him how a déclassée grows used to it. She
knew how the mind can adjust itself to any phase of experience, and
had learned that what woman has undergone, woman can undergo
—yes, and be strong about it. She knew how, under the impulse of
necessity, the once impossible grows to be the accepted life, and the
food that could not be swallowed becomes the daily bread.
When the struggle for existence becomes a hand-to-hand fight,
traditions of one’s ancestry do not matter, except, possibly, that some
traditions bind you to strength and silence, while others leave you
free to scream. She knew what it was to forget the past and ignore
the future, and survey the present with the single-hearted purpose of
securing three meals a day, if possible; two, if it were not.
She had forgotten with what facility she might the faces and
scenes that once were dear to her. She had nothing to do with them
any longer, as she knew. She might, perhaps, have heard their
names without emotion. But, even in this day and generation and
among this democratic people, in the soul of a woman bred as she
had been the feeling for her caste is the last feeling that dies. And to
her anguish she found that in her it was not yet dead.
The color died from the sky, and the stars came swiftly out.